Oniri Islands at Gamescom 2016

You might remember from last year, the two girls that were preparing the game for pads, Onirigami. Well this year, they were also in the Indie Arena Booth showcasing their now renamed game, Oniri Islands. We had a chat with the girls of Tourmaline studio, Camille Attard and Marion Bareil, and they told us all the latest news on the game.

The game is still as we remember it, an interactive co-op adventure game for kids, ages 6 to 10 but also for adults that enjoy these sort of casual games. It is full of relaxed puzzles so you can just enjoy the exploration aspects of it as well as the pretty environments. The game uses mini-figures that the player needs to move around in order to interact with the things happening in the game. Changing masks on the characters’ figures also changes various abilities and things that the player can do in the game.

Tourmaline studio runs with 10 people at the moment with Camille and Marion being the founders. The final production for the game started in January 2016 but overall, the development of prototypes for it has started 2 years ago. “Our biggest issue was making the user experience as enjoyable and intuitive as possible. Having interaction with the game was important,” said Marion.

“The camera is no longer set in one point but now moves as you move around. People are really enjoying exploring and generally the freedom that there is in the gameplay,” explained Marion. The game is planned to go on Kickstarter to get crowdfunding in early 2017. From there on, a full release is planned for Christmas of 2017. “The main challenge is getting the distribution right because the game comes with figures.”

The game will be sold with the figures of course (and the masks that accompany it) and Marion told us that it will probably cost about 30 euros for the whole package (for all of the figures and the game will be for free). The game will also last for a good 4 to 5 hours.

“One more thing that is important to mention is that, even though we didn’t really think about it, we just did it, is the fact that people have been commending us on the two main characters being a boy and a girl. The fact that the game is gender friendly, with the girl even wearing a shark mask and all that, really had the game receiving some good feedback. For us, it just came naturally to do that,” explained Marion.